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5 ways to impress your audience with visual content

When I started blogging, I was determined to build a powerful online presence around my personal brand. I conjured Rambo-like courage and grit.

After a year of pure sweat and daily commitment, I was not gaining any traction. It was frustrating. But when I began to experiment with visual storytelling, things took off. This revelation is an example of broader communication trend in how we spread ideas online.

Why the visual marketing is happening (and what it means to you)

Whether it’s Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram, people love showing and sharing images online. And it’s not only the “normal” crowd. In the tech and marketing world, it’s infographics and cartoon-based marketing campaigns that get spread just as fanatically.

But please don’t dismiss this as a fad. This is way deeper than that. Social networks such as Pinterest may rise and fall, but visual storytelling has been with us for thousands of years and will continue to evolve.

It is a progression (bitter tongues may call it a regression) of how we consume content. Like Shakespeare’s literature feels stiff and indigestible by today’s reading standards, so will purely text-based content in the near future.

The almighty Internet has left us with the attention spans of gold fishes, and that means we want easy-to-consume, straight-to-the-point information. Not dumbing it down—you can be witty and sharp as a blade—but you have to present your content in a brain-friendly manner if you want to make it spread today.

An example from my personal experience

I created a visual, cartoonish branding guide called “The Outstander.” To promote it online, I uploaded a 20 preview slideshow to SlideShare. And 24 hours later, it was featured on its homepage, attracted more than 65,000 views—and it even produced some new commissions.

When I asked people why it’s so popular, they all said it was my cartoons paired with the short, witty statements. And these people aren’t die-hard comic geeks—they are a traditional business-to-business and business-to-consumer audience.

Visual marketing is Jedi-powerful. It can dramatically help you sell your products and ideas online.

2. Make stats sexy. Whether you want to spread data and stats in your company or share it with the public, infographics are a sure-fire way to make people enjoy consuming stats and it encourages them to share the information.

3. Be stunning. Go for beautiful product shots. I took special care with creating my visual branding guide, giving it a glossy 3D cover shot. My customers said it played a vital part in their buyer’s decision. Stunning product shots increase sales, even for digital products.

4. Cut to the point. Visual marketing also means you have to change the way you treat language. Concise and effective text rules over fluff and elaboration overkill. Pretend you’re paying a fine for every excess word and sentence you include.

5. Use visual storytelling in your slideshow presentation. One idea per slide, packaged concisely in one to three sentences with support of a striking, relatable image. Check the popular slideshows on the SlideShare homepage for effective examples.

Yeah, I know it’s a lot of work. But the standards of content (sharing) keep surging onward. Text overload is passé.

If you’re fighting for attention, give your audience some eye candy and cut through the clutter. Do you have some favorite examples of this?

Mars Dorian describes himself as a creative marketeer with a moon-melting passion for human potential and technology. You can follow his adventures at www.marsdorian.com/. A version of this story first appeared on the {grow} blog.